The Piano Teacher

by Elfriede Jelinek

  Klemmer’s face is as smooth as a mirror. Erika’s face is starting to get marked by its later decay. The skin creases, the eyelids arch weakly like heated paper, the delicate texture under the eyes crinkles bluishly. The two sharp notches that run from the nostrils can never be ironed out again. The surface of the face has become too large, and this process will continue for years and years, until the flesh under the skin shrivels and vanishes, and the skin nestles snugly against the skull, which it can no longer keep warm. Single white threads in the hair, fed by stagnant saps, multiply incessantly, until they form ugly nests, which hatch nothing, enclose nothing, nurture nothing; and Erika, too, has never enclosed anything warmly, not even her own body. But she would like to be enclosed. He should lust for her, he should pursue her, he should lie at her feet, he should be haunted by her, there should be no escape for him. Erika can seldom be seen in public. And her mother, too, usually keeps out of the public eye. They remain inside their four walls, and they don’t like visitors tracking them down. In this way, the two women save on personal wear and tear. Of course, when they do make a very rare public appearance, no one offers them very much.

  Erika’s decay knocks with scurrying fingers. Indistinct physical ailments, vascular deficiencies in the legs, tweaks of rheumatism, twinges of arthritis spread through the body. (These diseases seldom bother children. They never used to assault Erika.) Klemmer, a live brochure for the health benefits of white-water canoeing, scrutinizes his teacher as if he wanted to wrap her up and take her along, or perhaps eat her up, right there in the store. Maybe he’s the last man who’ll ever desire me, Erika thinks furiously, and soon I’ll be dead, only another thirty-five years, Erika thinks angrily. Jump on the train, because once I’m dead, I won’t hear, smell, or taste anything ever again! Her claws scratch at the keys. Her feet scrape pointlessly, embarrassedly; she touches herself vaguely, picks at herself; the man makes the woman nervous, robbing her of her mainstay, music.

  Mother waits at home. She looks at the kitchen clock, the relentless pendulum that will tick her daughter into the apartment no sooner than thirty minutes from now. Mother, who has nothing else to acquire, would rather wait here. What if Erika came home earlier than expected because a lesson was canceled? Then Mother wouldn’t have waited. But Erika is impaled on her piano stool, even as she is drawn to the door. The powerful magnet of domestic silence, interlaced with the sound of the TV (that center of absolute rest and inertia), is turning into physical pain inside her. Klemmer should just shove off! Why does he keep talking and talking here, while the water keeps boiling at home until the kitchen ceiling turns moldy?

  The tip of Klemmer’s shoe nervously ruins the inlaid floor as he blows out the small, superimportant realities of keyboard technique like smoke rings into the air. Meanwhile, the woman longs to go home. Klemmer asks what constitutes sound, and then answers his own question: the touch, the approach. His mouth discharges a torrent of words: that shadowy, intangible remnant made up of sound, color, light. No, no, the things on your list do not constitute music as I know it, chirps Erika, the cricket, who wants to get back to her warm hearth. You’re wrong, that and that alone is music, the young man erupts. For me, the criteria of art are the imponderables, the immeasurables. Klemmer’s dictum contradicts the teacher. Erika closes the piano lid, pushes objects around. The man has chanced upon Schubert on some mental shelf, and he instantly exploits his find. The more Schubert’s spirit dissolves in smoke, scent, color, thought, the more indescribable his value. His value grows to gigantic proportions, beyond understanding. Shadow is far superior to substance, states Klemmer. Why, reality is probably one of the greatest errors in the world. Hence, lies go before truth, the man concludes from his own words. The unreal comes before the real. And that enhances the quality of art.

  The domestic delight of dinner, inadvertently delayed, is a black hole for the star known as Erika. She knows that her mother’s embrace will completely devour and digest her, yet she is magically drawn to it. Carmine settles on her cheekbones, consolidating its position. Klemmer should clam up and clamber away. Erika doesn’t want to remember even a speck of dust on his shoes. She yearns for a long, intimate embrace, so that, once the embrace is over, this marvelous woman can regally push him away. Klemmer has never felt less inclined to leave her. After all, he has to tell her that he can love Beethoven’s sonatas only as of Opus 101. Because, he blabbers on, that’s when they really become soft, flow into one another; the individual movements become flat, washing out at the edges, they don’t clash with one another. That’s what Klemmer comes up with. He squeezes in the final remnant of these ideas, then ties up the end of the sausage, so the insides won’t burst out.

  To change the subject, Professor, I must tell you—and I shall explain it in greater detail—that a human being attains his supreme value only when he lets go of reality and enters the realm of the senses, which should apply to you, too. And also to Beethoven and Schubert, my favorite masters, with whom I feel personally involved. I don’t know precisely how. But I feel—and it also applies to me—that we despise reality and regard both art and the senses as our sole reality. It’s over for Beethoven and Schubert. But I, Klemmer, am in the ascendant. He accuses Erika Kohut of lacking all that. He tells her that she clings to superficial things while a man abstracts and separates essentials from nonessentials. Klemmer, a student, has given an impudent answer. He has dared to do so.

  In Erika’s mind there is only one source of light, illuminating everything as bright as day, especially the sign that says: Exit. The comfy TV easy chair spreads its arms wide, the lead-in for the evening news plays softly, the anchorman stirs soberly above his tie. The side table sports an exemplary wealth of colorful bowls containing goodies and gumdrops, of which the two ladies partake, alternately or simultaneously. An empty bowl is promptly refilled; this is Never-Never Land, where nothing ends and nothing begins.

  Erika pushes things from one end of the music studio to the other and then back again. She looks pointedly at the clock, she emits an invisible signal from her lofty mast, showing how tired she is after her hard day’s work, during which art was dilettantishly abused in order to satisfy parental ambitions.

  Klemmer stands there, gazing at her.

  Erika doesn’t want a silence to develop, so she utters a platitude. Art is platitudinous for Erika because she lives off art. How much easier it is for the artist, says the woman, to hurl feelings or passions out of himself. When an artist resorts to dramatic devices, which you so greatly esteem, Klemmer, he is simply utilizing bogus methods while neglecting authentic ones. She talks to prevent the eruption of silence. I, as a teacher, favor undramatic art—Schumann, for instance. Drama is always easier! Feelings and passions are always merely a substitute, a surrogate for spirituality. The teacher yearns for an earthquake, for a roaring, raging tempest to pounce upon her. That wild Klemmer is so angry that he almost drills his head into the wall. The clarinet class next door, which he, the owner of a second instrument, has been frequenting twice a week, would certainly be astonished if Klemmer’s angry head suddenly emerged from the wall, next to Beethoven’s death mask. Oh, that Erika, that Erika. She doesn’t sense that he is actually talking about her, and naturally about himself as well! He is connecting Erika and himself in a sensual context, ejecting the spirit, that enemy of the senses, that primal foe of the flesh. She thinks he is referring to Schubert, but he really means himself, just as he always means himself whenever he speaks.

  He suddenly ventures to adopt a familiar tone with Erika; using a formal tone, she advises him to remain objective! Her mouth puckers, willy-nilly, into a wrinkly rosette; she cannot control it. She controls what the mouth says, but she cannot control the way it presents itself to the outside world. She gets goosebumps all over.

  Klemmer is frightened; blissfully grunting, he wallows in the warm tub of his words and thoughts. He pounces upon the piano, enjoying himself. In a tempo that exceeds the speed limit, he plays a longer phras
e that he happened to learn by heart. He wants to demonstrate something with the phrase; he wonders what. Erika Kohut is happy about this slight diversion; she throws herself against the student, in order to stop the express train before it really gets going. You’re playing much too fast and also much too loud, Herr Klemmer, and you’re merely proving that the absence of the spiritual in an interpretation can cause terrible lacunae.

  The man catapults backward into a chair. He stands, steaming, like a racehorse that has brought home a lot of victories. In order to be rewarded for victories and to prevent defeats, he demands expensive treatment and tender loving care, at the very least like a silver service for twelve.

  Erika wants to go home. Erika wants to go home. Erika wants to go home. She offers some good advice: Simply walk around Vienna and breathe deeply. Then play Schubert, but this time correctly!

  I’m leaving, too. Walter Klemmer violently assembles his compact stack of scores and makes an exit like a stage star, except that not too many people are watching. Still, a star and an audience in one person, he also plays the spectators. And he offers a bonus of thunderous applause.

  Outside, Klemmer’s blond hair flutters behind him as he dashes into the men’s room, where he gulps down a pint of water straight from the faucet. However, the liquid can’t wreak much havoc inside his water-weathered body. He then splashes his face, splashes his head: Billows of mountain springwater, flowing cleanly from the headwaters, end on Klemmer’s face and head. I always drag beautiful things through the mud, he says to himself. Vienna’s famous but now venomous water is wasted. Klemmer scrubs his hands with energy that he cannot use elsewhere. He keeps tapping green liquid soap from the dispenser, over and over again. He sprays and gargles. He keeps repeating his ablutions. He waves his hands around, wetting his hair. His mouth emits artificial sounds, which are arty, but meaningless. Because he’s got love trouble. He snaps his fingers and cracks his joints. Using the tip of one shoe, he maltreats the wall under the small, blind window to the courtyard, but he can’t release what’s locked inside him. A few drops do spurt out, but the rest of the contents remains in its container, slowly growing rancid because it can’t reach the female port-of-call. Yes, indeed, no doubt about it: Walter Klemmer is truly in love. Not for the first time, to be sure, and certainly not for the last time. His love, however, is unrequited. His feelings are unreturned. This turns his stomach, and he proves his disgust by hawking up mucus and noisily placing it in the sink. Klemmer’s love placenta. He closes the faucet so tight that his successor will assuredly not get it open, unless he’s a pianist, too, and has steel wrists and fingers. Since Klemmer doesn’t rinse the sink, his clams linger at the drain hole. Anyone who takes a close look will see them distinctly.

  At that very second, a deathly pale student (piano or something of the sort) comes dashing in, straight from his examination. Plunging into one of the stalls, he throws up into the commode. It is like a natural disaster. An earthquake seems to be raging inside his body; many things seem to have collapsed inside him, including any hope of getting his degree all that soon. This examinee had to hold back his agitation because the head of the school was present at the exam. Now the agitation forcefully demands its rights—right into the toilet bowl. The student messed up the chromatic étude. He began in double time, which no human being can endure, including Chopin. Klemmer scorns the closed stall door, behind which his fellow musician is now struggling with the runs. Any pianist who is so powerfully dominated by his body cannot possibly add anything crucial to his performance. He probably sees music only as a handicraft, and he takes it unnecessarily hard whenever one of his ten tools fails him. Klemmer has already progressed beyond this stage; he heeds only the inner truth of a piece. For instance, he feels there is nothing more to say about the sforzandos in Beethoven’s piano sonatas; one has to feel them, one has to suggest them to the listeners rather than play them. Klemmer could spend hours lecturing on the spiritual profit to be gained from a musical piece, whose surplus value is within reach, but can be grasped only by the most courageous. The important thing is what the composer says, what he feels, and not the mere structure of the piece.

  Klemmer lifts his music case high and, emphasizing his thesis, smashes it down on the porcelain sink several times, in order to squeeze out his last few drops of energy—on the off chance that he’s got any left. Yet, as Klemmer notices, he is already drained. He has lavished all his strength on that woman, he says, quoting a famous novel. He’s done everything he could, as far as she’s concerned. I pass, says Klemmer. He offered her his very best part, all of him. He even repeatedly interpreted himself. Now all he wants is to spend a weekend of white-water canoeing in order to find himself again. Perhaps Erika Kohut is far too withered to understand him. She understands only parts of him, not the grand total.

  The student who failed because of the chromatic etude trudges out of his stall and to the mirror. Somewhat comforted by his shimmering reflection, he gives his hair an artistic sweep, the finishing touch, to make up for the failure of his hands. Walter Klemmer is comforted by the thought that his teacher never made it as a concert artist. Then, audible for miles around, he spits on the floor, getting rid of the last inner foam that his temper has produced. His fellow pianist glares reproachfully at the spit, because he is accustomed to order. Art and order, the relatives that refuse to relate. Klemmer passionately grabs dozens of paper towels from their dispenser, crushes them up into a ball, and tosses them at the wastebasket, missing it by a gnat’s eyelash. The flunker looks askance at this action. He is dismayed once again, this time by the waste of property belonging to the City of Vienna. His mother and father own a mom-and-pop store, and he will have to return to his petty-bourgeois family if he can’t pass the exam next time around. His parents will then stop supporting him. He will have to switch from art to business, which will, no doubt, be mentioned when he goes a-courting. And his wife and children will have to suffer the consequences of that truth. Thus business and pleasure will remain intact. At the mere thought of this, his frost-red sausage fingers, which have to help out in the store, convulse into raptorial claws.

  Walter Klemmer sensibly places his heart in his head and mentally reviews the women he has already possessed and remaindered. He gave them detailed explanations for dispensing with them. He didn’t hold back; he wanted to make sure they understood (no pain, no gain). If a man feels like it, he can walk out without a word. The woman’s antennae flicker nervously in the air; after all, a woman is an emotional creature. She is not dominated by reason, as you can tell from the way she plays the piano. A woman usually won’t do more than hint at her ability; she’s quite content to go no further. Klemmer, on the other hand, always likes to go all the way.

  Walter Klemmer is well aware that he wants to take on his teacher. He resolutely wishes to conquer her. Klemmer, like an elephant, tramples two white tiles underfoot at the mere thought that his love might go unrequited. A few seconds from now, he will zoom, like the Arlberg Express from the tunnel of the same name, into an icy winter landscape dominated by reason. And this landscape is so cold partly because Erika Kohut has not lit a light in it. Klemmer advises that woman to give some serious thought to her meager possibilities. A young man is simply bursting at the seams for her. At the moment, they share a mental foundation. But if that foundation is suddenly pulled out from under their feet, Klemmer will have to paddle his own canoe.

  His footfalls echo through the deserted corridor of the conservatory. He bounces emphatically down the stairs, like a rubber ball, from step to step, slowly finding his good mood, which was patiently waiting for him. No sound comes from behind Kohut’s door. Sometimes, when her teaching day is over, she plays a little, because her piano at home is a lot worse. He’s already found that out. He briefly gropes for the doorknob in order to feel something that the teacher touches day after day; but the door remains cold and mute. It doesn’t budge even one millimeter, because it’s locked. The lessons are over. She’s al
ready halfway home to her senile mother, with whom she huddles in their nest, forever exchanging punches. Yet they can’t part company, not even on vacation, which they spend at a Styrian resort, squabbling and bickering. And it’s been like that for decades already! It’s a pathological situation for a sensitive woman, who, if viewed mathematically from all sides, isn’t all that old. Such are Walter Klemmer’s positive thoughts about his beloved in his wait-and-see position, as he starts off to his parents, with whom he lives.

  He asked them to prepare an extra-hearty dinner. For one thing, he has to refill the energy tanks that he drained because of his teacher; for another, he wants to work out tomorrow, set off at the crack of dawn. The sport doesn’t matter, but he’ll probably go to his canoeing club. He has a very personal urge to work out until he drops, inhaling completely unused air, rather than air that thousands of other people have already breathed in and out. An air in which Klemmer doesn’t have to suck in the vapors of engines and the cheap food of average people. He’d like to take in something freshly produced by Alpine trees with the help of chlorophyll. He’ll go to the darkest and most deserted part of Styria. There he’ll lower his boat into the water, near an old weir. A harsh orange splotch because of his helmet, life jacket, and spray cover, he’ll shoot along between two forests, careening now here, now there, but always in the same direction: forward, following the course of the torrent. You have to do your best to avoid rocks. Don’t turn turtle! And keep speeding! Some buddy, another paddler, will be in hot pursuit behind him, but he won’t catch up, much less shoot ahead of Klemmer. Friendship in sports ends where the other guy threatens to surpass you. A buddy is someone who measures his own strength against his buddy’s lesser strength and increases his own lead. Toward this end, Walter Klemmer carefully picks out a less experienced paddler far in advance. When it comes to working out or playing out, Klemmer is not a good loser. That’s why he’s so annoyed about Erika Kohut. When he gets knocked down in a drag-out discussion, he doesn’t throw in the towel. He angrily throws something in the opponent’s face: a heap of pellets, the kind regurgitated by carnivorous birds—a pack of bones, indigestible hair, pebbles, raw grass. Then he gazes absently, mentally reviewing all the things he could have said, but, alas, didn’t; and finally, he leaves the ring in a foul temper.